Advert Photos

For our poster, we decided that we were going to include an image of the band and so we decided to take pictures of our band in the drama hall, coincidentally the same place where we had filmed our music video rough-cut as it's dark backdrop gave our image an extremely dark look. Prior to shooting these images, we knew that we wanted them to form a triangle shape, allowing us to create a neon triangle / light effect which would surround the three band members. To make this effect easier to achieve we used red lighting on the band members. Here are those images which we took.

Due to Jamie's dark clothing, it is very hard to see anything other than his face, hands and shoes in the images. We may have to consider reshooting these photos or possibly using images that we take for our digipak on the advert instead. This is because the advert wont be affective enough with such dark images.

Digipack Analysis 5 - Twenty One Pilots - Blurryface

Here is 'Twenty One Pilots' digipak for their album 'Blurry Face'. Like many of the digipaks we have looked at, the front cover does not feature the band members. Instead it features animated images of 9 circles with different patterns inside of them. We are also planning on using an image for the front cover which doesn't feature the band, however we will photograph a still which will relate to our album title rather than animating one. The Placement of the text has the bands name at the top and the album title at the bottom, this seems to be a common convention therefore we will more than likely follow this layout. The fonts are slightly different as the album title has a line going through it. We are considering using Photoshop to create a smoky font for our album title. When practicing creating the font we have experimented using the smudge tool to also draw a line through the middle of our text as we liked the effect it created.

The colour scheme of the digipak is black, whites, and reds. This is also the colour scheme we used in our music video and so we will also be using this colour scheme for our digipak. From looking at this digipak it has reassured us that this is the colour scheme we would like to go for as it looks edgy which is the look we want to achieve. The use of lines and circles creates a really abstract feel to the digipak, it is also so simple to achieve with a really nice effect. We may also use some lines on our digipak to structure the front cover.

The back of the digipak features the tracklist. The song titles aren't numbered, this seems to be a convention followed by some, whereas other digipaks do number them. When we come to layout our back of the digipak we will experiment with both and see which we prefer. The placement of their song titles is towards the left of the page, it is likely we will also be placing our tracklist towards the left of the page, however we will have it further left due to the picture we are considering to use behind the text. We must also make sure to include a barcode on the back of our CD as well as a disclaimer notice as these will make it look more professional and realistic.

Digipak & Advert - First Shoot

Today we started taking pictures for our digipak and advert. We started off in a dark sheltered area near where we live to take pictures of the woman in heels crushing a mans hand. We had a play around using different lenses and different lighting to see if we could achieve the shot we wanted.  We decided on this shot as we thought it matched our music video as the girl is in complete control in our video.

We used the location shown in the pictures below as it had quite a run down, urban feel to it to match our bands image.  We also later used the dark drama hall in school for another shot as it represented the darkness our main character in the video feels whilst trying to tackle his addiction.

We then headed back to school to use the drama studio to get photos of our band in a completely black space for the advert and also to get pictures of white smoke against a black background. To get this effect we used a vape instead of actual smoke due to the indoor location that we had to use to get the photo. We also had a short time scale to do this in as we were wary about setting off the smoke alarm. We didn't set the alarm off and we managed to get everything done that we wanted to today so it was a successful shoot. This has given us lots of confidence in our ideas and has also given us a good idea of how our digipak and advert are going to look.

Here are a few pictures we took while we were out.

Evaluation Brainstorm

We have now started to think about our evaluation as well as our digipak and advert. So far we have started to brainstorm some of the things we could use to answer the four questions. We haven't done much at the moment in regards to the question about our ancillary texts because these aren't finished yet. However, we have made a start on the others.

 

The 4 questions are:

 

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

 

 

We are going to make notes about each one which we will then turn into a script for the evaluation in the form of DVD extras. Once we have developed some sort of script with full answers to all of the questions, we are going to sit down and discuss the different ways we can do our evaluation to be creative and make it more interesting than something really basic.

After we have decided on our creative idea we will probably make any necessary amendments to the script to fit in with the main theme of the video and we will then begin to film each question. Then its just all down to the editing from there which hopefully won't take too long if we can get all of the footage in the right place.



Diagram of our Digipak

We created a rough draft of our digipak in our brainstorming session. Here is what we decided.

The front -

On the cover of the digipack will be a picture of a woman's legs in a pair of high heels standing on a mans hand. Behind her will be bottles and broken glass. The picture will show superiority to the woman and that she has the man under her control, which links to the album title 'Temptress'. We will include the bands name and album title on the front as well. We have decided to try and use a dark colour scheme for this to fit with the bands image of being urban and grungy.

Inside cover -

This will either be a candid or posed picture of the band in a graffitied location. The band will be wearing dark clothing to match with their edgy look. We decided not to put the band on the front of the album as when analysing other digipacks we discovered that many did not have the band on the front, but an image relating to their album.

CD -

The Cd will feature a pair of dark red lips. We chose this as it can relate to the album title of 'Temptress'. The colour red has connotations of love and passion but can also have connotations of evil. This can link to temptation as the word temptress means 'a woman who tempts someone to do something, typically a sexually attractive woman who sets out to allure or seduce someone.' We also chose to use lips as they are also often sexualised.

The back -

The back will be a cloud of white/grey smoke against a plain black background. This fits with the other images on our digipack as it has a dark and eerie feeling to it. we will overlay this image with the tracklist to our bands album.

These are all just our initial ideas, these ideas may be subject to change as we move further through the process as we may discover that certain things don't work etc. So far though, we are happy with what we have produced here as an initial idea and we are excited to get this started and see what we can create from these ideas.

Diagram for our Advert

Here is a quick sketch up of what we have in mind for our bands advert. We are going to have the three band members in the centre upper half of the poster. They will be staggered, with the tallest standing furthest back and the shortest further forward to lessen the effect of the tallness of our singer. The emotion on their face will either be very serious and in-passive, or they will be smirking given off a 'cocky' sort of look. In Photoshop we will then edit in a red neon triangle which will intertwine through the band members. To achieve the look that this triangle is glowing onto the band, when we take the picture we will use red lights in front of and behind the band members.

We will use the same font for 'Urban Rapture' as we do in the logo which will go below the picture of the band. Underneath that will be the album title 'Temptress' which we are going to try and do in a smokey font. In the top corner we will also include a picture of the digipack. We must also include a release date for the album and possibly a review.

Choosing The Composition

Today we have had more time to think about what we are going to do with our poster and digipak and we have tried to simulate what it will look like in terms of composition. To do this, we have visualised our ideas into some diagrams to see what works best aesthetically and kept working with different ideas.

From doing this, we have found that it would be best to have Jamie and Annabelle closer to the camera than Alex which will make everyone seem at a similar height as it would not work as well with Alex if he seemed bigger than the rest of the band as he will stick out massively. We also thought of the idea to use a neon triangle to go around the band.

In terms of how we're going to create this triangle, there are a few different ways in which we could do this. For example, we could obtain an actual neon triangle, this would be the most difficult and expensive to get a hold of. It would give us the desired effect but there are certainly other ways of getting that effect.

Secondly, we could try to Slow down the shutter speed of the camera use a light source to draw a bright triangle around the band. Although this is a lot less costly than buying a  neon triangle it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to make a perfect triangle with a free-hand light source. This still seems quite viable however should we choose to do it.

Thirdly, we could use some software such as Photoshop to create a neon effect. However, the only drawback of this is making it appear realistic and not like something which has been added in afterwards. This means that our only limitation really is our ability to use such software, this also means that what could be produced could be either extremely poor as a final product or give us our desired effect. Especially if when taking the photos of the band we use red lights to illuminate them as though it were the triangle which will make it look realistic. 

As it stands, the third option will be the most likely as it will produce are more clean and professional effect as well as being less time consuming than the second option.